Homes left in stomach-churning squalor

WE SHOULD really never complain about our jobs again - because Sandra Pankhurst's is far worse. She has to deal with houses that look like this.

From the house of the dead hermit who was eaten by his dog, to another where a man threw himself on a table saw to the home of the woman who had a cat farm in her living room. Pankhurst knows no bounds when it comes to cleaning up the detritus of human existence.

Author Sarah Krasnostein followed Pankhurst through scenes like these to chart the Melbourne director of Specialist Trauma Cleaning (STC) Services's amazing life.

That life - from husband and father to transgender woman funeral director and trauma cleaner with extreme compassion for hoarders and outcasts - is outlined in Krasnostein's new book.

In writingThe Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay & Disaster, the authorspent several years following Pankhurst into disgusting scenes.

For the past 20 years, Pankhurst's chosen occupation has "led her into dark homes where death, sickness and madness have suddenly abbreviated the lives inside," Krasnostein writes.

As frank as she is empathetic to the poor souls she cleans up after, Pankhurst writes in her STC brochure about the power of human decay.

"People do not understand about body fluids. Bodily fluids are like acids," Krasnostein's book quotes the brochure.